Xbox One's Reveal: The Opposite of What IGN’s Audience Wanted?

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Our poll results versus Microsoft's event.

By Cam Shea

IGN UK ran a poll yesterday, asking its readers what they’d like to see during the next-gen Xbox reveal event. 5,000 people voted, and now that said event has taken place, we can take a look at how your desires tallied with what Microsoft delivered. The disconnect is stark to say the least.

When asked “What are you most excited to hear about from the next-gen Xbox announcement?” 35% of respondents said tech specs. While some tech specs were mentioned, Microsoft largely glossed over the details, instead saying that the system packs 8GB of RAM, an eight core processor with a native 64-bit architecture and has five billion transistors. The company also said that Kinect 2.0 captures at 1080p, features 30fps colour and processes two gigabits of data per second.

The questions that were unanswered during the event itself was what type of RAM is in the system (now confirmed as DDR3, in contrast to the PS4’s GDDR5), what speed the CPU cores run at (most likely 1.6GHz) and how beefy the GPU will be.

The other crucial result from that poll question was that 36% of respondents said they’d like to see game announcements. Microsoft, however, chose to focus primarily on Xbox One as an entertainment device, with games bringing up the rear.

The only real announcements were Forza Motorsport 5 and Remedy’s Quantum Break. The former was debuted via a trailer, with no live gameplay demo, while the latter was also revealed via a trailer, with no gameplay, just real-life footage and CG. Other than that, there were no surprises. EA Sport games coming to the system? Cool, but a given. Call of Duty: Ghosts? Again, cool, but a given. All those games will also be available on other systems.

This result ties into the second question, which was “Which game announcements are you most looking forward to?” 61% of respondents said “something new”. Granted, Quantum Break is new, but for a system that will have 15 exclusives in its first year, one game – with no actual gameplay – ain’t enough. Almost 5% of respondents were looking forward to the new Forza, while 8% were looking forward to Call of Duty: Ghosts.

The final poll result we’ll discuss is perhaps the most telling. “Which rumoured new features are you most interested in hearing about?” The overwhelming majority of respondents – 52% - chose “improved processing for better graphics”. What did Microsoft focus on? The new controller was discussed briefly, which would have pleased the 17% of respondents who were most interested in it, but the lion’s share of the talk during the reveal was about multi-tasking and Kinect 2.0, which garnered 8% and 5% of the votes respectively.

Granted, there can be a huge gulf between what people want to see and what they actually wind up being excited about, but it certainly feels like Microsoft's approach was at odds with what gamers actually wanted.